The B’Tsalmo organization has sent a letter to the Knesset Ethics Committee requesting that it order the suspension of MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash-Ta”al) and hold back his salary after he supported a boycott of Israel.
The complaint comes after Cassif last week met with members of the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Belgium and then wrote on his Facebook account, “I congratulated the representative of the city of Liege on the city council’s decision to boycott Israel as long as the occupation and fascism continue.”
In a letter to the Ethics Committee, B’Tsalmo CEO Shai Glick wrote, “His actions, apart from severely harming the citizens of Israel, also fundamentally harm the public’s trust in the Knesset and its colleagues. The right to boycott is not part of freedom of speech. In conclusion, since there are countless complaints against Mr. Cassif, I will be thankful for a discussion of all of them and for him to be suspended for the maximum period of six months plus a financial penalty of the denial of his salary.”
“The boycotter will be boycotted. It’s time for the Knesset’s Ethics Committee to get rid of the violent instigator Ofer Cassif, after he beat a policeman and after he called for a boycott of Israeli citizens,” Glick said after sending the letter.
MK Cassif told Israel National News in response, “As long as there is occupation and apartheid, and now also a dictatorial regime coup, resistance is the order of the day. A boycott is a tool of non-violent political resistance aimed at stopping the crimes of the government. In this sense, a boycott actually benefits the state and its citizens – it is a tool in the fight for justice, democracy and preventing a deterioration into violence. This is how, for example, the opponents of apartheid in South Africa acted in their call to boycott their country. Don’t want a boycott? End the occupation and apartheid and establish a true democracy for all.”
Cassif, the sole Jewish representative in Hadash-Ta”al, has repeatedly drawn criticism for his anti-Israel statements, including comparisons of Israeli leaders and even the State of Israel to the Nazi party and Nazi-era Germany.
Cassif once shared a Facebook post calling Ayelet Shaked, who at the time was serving as Justice Minister, a “neo-Nazi scum”.
In 2017, he was recorded during a class comparing the State of Israel to Nazi Germany, warning that Israel was “on a slippery slope” to fascism.

In another incident, Cassif said that Israel should not be compared to an apartheid state because, he claimed, it is “worse than apartheid”.
Earlier this year, the Knesset Ethics Committee decided to temporarily suspend Cassif from the plenary following a verbal confrontation in which he called MK Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit), among other things, a “stinking Nazi”, “zero”, “stupid” and “bloodthirsty”.